2005 – Devlog Arunderan

26.10.2005 – The Game Arunderan is finished now.

With developing the game Arunderan i fulfilled myself the dream which surely every hobbygamedeveloper dreams. To create a little Action Adventure/RPG. This should be fast done. Nobody understands why professionals need this long to develop such a game anyway. Some graphics, some code, and the game is done.

HA !

I probably would never have started this project when i would have known what i know now. The first sprite for Arunderan was done in November 2002. So the development time for Arunderan was close to three years. NOW i know why professionals counts in manyears 😉

Anyway, here´s the Devlog.

DEVLOG:

12.5.2003: first public Testengine

Available features:

– fully navigation across the Menu
– picking up items
– controlling quickuse for itemmenu
– talking to fairy and sheep
– open the barrel by leftklicking at it

missing features:

Well, don´t talk about it. Miles away from being finished … 😉

20.6.2003: first Testengine deleted, and second one released

New features:

Some changings at the graphics, walk-run implemented. Weapons equipable (sprite is changing) . Other stuff equipable (shown in the status screen) , pathfinding, sprite can be controlled with holding down the mouse. The first version was only movable with click … pausing while being in the menu (Stan knits) .

There are also three screenshots of the town arundel inside. That´s what it´s all about. The filesize is grown up to over 5 mb … and it is still just a little testengine 😉

31.10.2003: second Testengine deleted, and third one released

New features:

Again some graphics changings. The menu … . A second frame for enemies … . And a lot of changings at the code. Fighting, magic, two languages, and and and …

Most of the stuff will be done with left mouseclick. Teleporting for example. Click left at the teleporter … . Fighting is right mousebutton. Take care that the enemie is between Stan and the mousehand. Stan is fighting in direction of the mousehand … .

Still missing is such things like saving, finetuning fighting, bughunting, etc …

Besides that: most of the problems are solved for building a game out of it. So the next release will be a demo with the first levels. I am just waiting for MMF build 114. The current build 113 destroys my code while pasting … Bad Objects 🙂

8.1.2004: third testengine deleted. therefore uploaded the very first demo 1-0 with the first playable frames.

Take care to have a look at the Manual

A lot is still missing. But it goes on 🙂

Next is Leveldesign, Storyline and finetuning of the Gameengine. There is always something not working like thought … .

15.5.2004: No new upload. Just a small note to show you that the development is still in progress 😉

Well, my mainbusiness at the moment is still to create all those levels for Arundels Fluch. Unbelievable how much graphics needs to be placed in a 4000×3000 pixel Frame. The basic layout for the worldframes and the first three dungeons with its 5 frames each is done. Two dungeons are missing. Even now the current layout is really just the very basic shape. Ways not completed. But a big step to have a look what i need to place where. Dungeonfurniture, Traps, Riddles, etc. . Creating all the levels is also a veery timeconsuming job 😉

And it seems that i am unable to release a full version this year. Maybe a very first Beta around christmas … and grows, and grows, and grows …:P

6.10.2004: Nearly all Frames are shaped and ready prepared to connect them to the Mainbuild. So i have started to code again. The Game itself contains an amazingly big gameworld now: Four frames for the Earthdungeon. Waterdungeon, Firedungeon, Airdungeon and Bosstower with 5 frames each. And 12 Worldframes. All of them are 4000 x 3000 pixels big. So lots of space to get lost. And lots of space to code myself to dead 😉

1.1.2005: And again no new Upload. I think i will leave it this way until the first playable Alpha is finished.

All Levels are connected and walkable now. And i have finally finished with all people and their soulstones. All of them at least can be rescued and you can talk to them now. Next step is to integrate all the objects to pickup. Position to be found, corresponding dialogs etc .. Lots of work comes toward me there. Then follows the dungeonsetup, integrating all the enemies, and, and, and. Amazing how much time it needs to program all those stuff. I am still months away from a first playable Alpha …

8.5.2005: Time to wite a new note at least. Arundel is growing well. I will upload a new Version when I have fighted the last boss the first time. Which still needs a couple of weeks till months, though. The Releasedate for the first public alpha lies somewhere between August and October. Let´s have a look if i am able to …

About Music: Christian Bodosi was formerly meant to create the music. You still can find his name in the Credits of the Arundel Demo. Unfortunately it failed. A friendly professional Musician has taken the job instead: The music will be done by David Wide. And this is really excellent music for Arundel.

You can hear at his page what kind of music will be in Arundels Fluch once it is finished:

The Game itself is roughly playable up to the second boss at the moment. Very rough. No Gamebalance is available yet. Like Enemies against hero. And my boxes don’t spit out the desired items yet. The Finetuning is task for the beta stage. I want to have it completely playably first. Three Dungeons are still missing. As well as the puzzles. There are also lots of bugs in the game at the moment …

The first debugging has shown me some heavy problems. My Quickuse has given up working. The code for it was very tricky, and has taken place in several groups and across several frames. I wasn´t able to find the bug. It was also one of my first codepieces, and i rarely have used comments at that time. I simply wasn´t able to figure out what does what anymore. So i removed it completely. There is now direct access to all items instead.

My Movementengine has revealed its quirks, too. The opponents can bounce the hero into the wall, where he is trapped then. I still am looking for a solution there. A simple solution doesn’t seem to give, though. It seems that i have to redo the movement engine in several parts …

I also have my fights with once planned and then cancelled features. I once had plans to have enemies that casts magic. Therefore i have my cloaks to decrease the magic attack by this enemies. Well, i have cancelled those enemies. Too much work. And now my cloaks are useless. I have no clue what i can do with it now 😀

20.8.2005: Demo deleted, and upload of Beta Build 833. It is done. The first Beta of Arunderan is there. After now 2 years and 8 months i have a somehow working game. The once planned public Alpha is skipped therefore 😉

The name for the game also has changed as you may have noticed. A town called Arundel still exists. I needed over 2 1/2 years to notice this, LOL. Arundel is located in Sussex/England. And i don´t want to trouble around with the copyright for the name with a whole town. Searching a name for a game is always a very special chapter. I once had my fight for Rumbeard the Pirate with that, too. So i was on search for a new name again …

I decided to call it Arunderan now. Google finds nothing to this word. Perfect. And this name is even better for you english talking people out there. I noticed that some of you were in heavy trouble with the german word “Fluch” , which is the german word for curse 🙂

Nevertheless this beta is everything but perfect. Especially the english translation needs more tuning.

And the music also isn´t completely mixed. The first three songs ( mainmenu.wma, intro.wma und arunderan.wma ) are the final versions. The other eight songs are the raw mixes.

David Wide, who is writing the music for Arunderan, was so friendly to give me the permission to use this raw versions for my Beta. He simply needs longer than thought to finish the songs. The effort for making music is also nothing to be underestimated 😉

And finally there is surely more than one bug in the game. It is impossible to catch them all at once. The game has become highly complex over the years.

So there is still lots to do …

18.9.2005: Arunderan Beta Build 890 released.

Bughunting is a chapter for itself. A month full of bugs lies behind me. I killed a lot of them. And i had my fights with that. But that`s what the Beta stage is good for … 🙂

At 2.9.2005 i have released a first patch, which fixed lots of bugs. It turned Build 833 into 871. I have thought of fixing the remaining bugs with the full version. But i stumbled over a bug that makes it impossible to play through. So i had something to do. I grabbed Patchmaker, and tried to build an patch for that. Well, the patchsize would have been 50 MB. Which is a bit too big for just a patch …

So i decided to build a new installer, which installs Build 890 from scratch …

30.9.2005: old Beta Build 833 and its patch deleted. Newest build is 890 . One download is enough …

26.10.2005: Beta build 890 deleted and upload of the final version of Arunderan. Arunderan is done. Finally 😀

A couple of small quirks were fixed compared to the beta version 890. Nothing really world-shaking. I had for example mixed the names of the dragons Fauch and Zisch in the dialogs. Sometimes I am extremely daft …

However, the biggest changing concerns the music. The Beta Builds contained the unmastered Raw Versions of the songs. Here comes the final mastered ones. For file size reasons David Wide has agreed with me to use 64 Kbps for the compression of the WMA songs. We once thought of 80 Kbps. But the game would have grown by 5 MB then. It is already not this small …

Time to thank David Wide for the splendid cooperation as well as for his brilliant music for the game at this place. Thank you David. Alone the music is worth the download 🙂

I also would like to thank all the helpful minds and beta testers at this place. Listing all of them would be too much. Without your help i wouldn´t have catched all bugs. Thank you 🙂

Closing remark: An era therefore comes to an end. Three years Development for Arunderan find its degree. It has made lots of fun to me to develop the Game. I hope you have the same fun to play the game as i have had to develop it 🙂

Last edge note: Never again a this big project alone ( except the music, which is from David Wide ). At least not in the nearer future. Time for some quick made mini games now. Let´s have a look what big project follows then. Maybe a small strategy game. An Anno Clone or an Settlers clone maybe … err … 😛